Rocky McAlister reads this column religiously. He has to. He gets paid to read it. He’s a copy editor. After he reads it, he’s also paid to write a clever headline that grabs your attention even if the column doesn’t.

When Rocky asked me to “be funny,” I had this little urge inside to at least make the column something Rocky would find interesting.

Can you imagine Rocky starting to edit this column and discovering that he’s the subject of it? What a predicament. He may not like me telling that he’s about 50 and usually wears a hat at his computer terminal as he labors over another Bell column.

But he can’t do anything about it, except perhaps correct the rare misspelling or even rarer errors of style or grammar. He’s not supposed to alter the content or sense of the column. I know he found this to be more interesting to him than most of my columns. I hope it gave him a laugh.

Anyway, right after I received Rocky’s request to make him laugh, Farley Gordon came into the office. Farley was president of the Whittier Historical Society when I served on the board several years ago.

Farley asked me to be luncheon speaker in March at a meeting of an organization of retired federal employees.

“It would be good if you could give these people a few laughs along the way so they don’t fall asleep,” Farley said.

Twice in one day, someone was challenging me to be funny.

Also that day, I had gone on one of my park bench interviews. A while back, I said I would meet anyone in the Daily News circulation area on a park bench of their choice if they had a good, true story to share with me.

So, I had lunch on a bench at Penn Park with Samantha (Sugar) Smart, 31, Whittier dance teacher. I’ll tell her story in a future column, but in our conversation, she said the one most important characteristic in people is a good sense of humor. She even said she is used to performing and believes she can be quite funny and loves to make people laugh. How I envy that.

After these three encounters challenging my sense of humor in a single day, I was feeling comedically challenged, to put it mildly. I love to be funny, but can’t even tell a good joke because I get the punch lines wrong. Then, everyone stares at me and wonders what the heck I’m laughing at.

I, too, find a genuine sense of humor to be a divine gift – and I do mean divine. And, I do mean genuine. Lots of people yak and laugh at themselves but aren’t genuinely funny.

I find myself politely, if hypocritically, faking a chuckle at such times. My mouth sometimes quivers, it’s so hard to hold a smile.

I envy people who have a great sense of humor to call upon easily whenever the occasion is right. On the contrary, I rack my brain for a funny line, but the line doesn’t come until I’m driving home alone in my car. Then, I start laughing and people passing by look over and think I’m drunk.

Almost eight years ago I quit smoking. I’m convinced something in cigarettes affected my psychological makeup. In the early days after quitting, I was giddy. Next came a period of anger, a quick temper. Finally, I wrote about discovering I had lost my sense of humor during nicotine withdrawal.

It wasn’t long before I had people all over Whittier sending me suggestions where to look for a lost sense of humor. Others assured me it wasn’t lost, that they still were laughing at me.

And, the women of the Soroptimists Club of Whittier presented me with a huge fresh funny bone from a meat market at one of their noon luncheons. I couldn’t think of anything funny to say on such a hilarious occasion.

In eight years, I’ve learned two ways to be funny. One is to pray and God will make audiences laugh. That’s divine intervention. The other way is to ask former Whittier Police Chief Jim Bale to write some jokes for me, which he’s done on three occasions.

When he does, audiences laugh.

Jim’s retired and I hate to keep asking him for more jokes. He could make zillions writing for “Seinfeld” and I keep asking for free jokes.

There must be others who have some good jokes or tips on how to develop and nourish a good sense of humor. If so, I’d like to hear from you. I’ll try your material and tips on the retired federal employees before they go to sleep.